Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @04:10PM
from the om-nom-nom dept.

jamstar7 writes "According to Universe Today, 'Astronomers have witnessed the first evidence of a planet's destruction by its aging star as it expands into a red giant. "A similar fate may await the inner planets in our solar system, when the Sun becomes a red giant and expands all the way out to Earth's orbit some five-billion years from now," said Alex Wolszczan, from Penn State, University, who led a team which found evidence of a missing planet having been devoured by its parent star (abstract, pre-print). Wolszczan also is the discoverer of the first planet ever found outside our solar system. The planet-eating culprit, a red-giant star named BD+48 740, is older than the Sun and now has a radius about eleven times bigger than our Sun. The evidence the astronomers found was a massive planet in a surprising and highly elliptical orbit around the star — indicating a missing planet — plus the star's wacky chemical composition.' Five billion years or so is a long way off, so it's likely none of us has to worry about it. But still, watching a star eating its own planets is not only cool in its own right, but also provides food for thought as to how to keep the human species going long after the Sun starts going off the main sequence into red giant-hood. And, of course, putting more funding into astronomers' and physicists' hands now can give us a closer estimate of when it'll happen. It's all in the math..."

But still, watching a star eating its own planets is not only cool in its own right, but also provides food for thought as to how to keep the human species going long after the Sun starts going off the main sequence into red giant-hood.

1. Solve the fossil fuel crisis....47819121. Solve for the survival of the descendants of the human species after the sun goes red giant.47819122. Profit!

Space travel to another planet (or moon) within our solar system is absolutely possible, and if we can find a way to live sustainably for a billion years, I'm sure we can save enough energy to send a breeding population to Titan or so.

Space travel to another planet (or moon) within our solar system is absolutely possible, and if we can find a way to live sustainably for a billion years, I'm sure we can save enough energy to send a breeding population to Titan or so.

And even if we did this, what will life on Titan be when the sun is a red giant and Jupiter has become the first planet instead of the 5th?

We have about 0.5 billion years before Earth looks like Venus, coincidentally about the same length of time since multicellular life first evolved. We evolved in conjunction with the a biosphere that probably is unique. The likelyhood of our very long term survival is remote, the chances of our distant ancestors still being the same species is even more remote.

A sufficiently advanced and long-lived civilization comes to realize that its sun is a liability, not an asset.

Of course reaching the end of its life and going nova or red giant is bad. But even well before that, stars are known to throw nasty flares and Carrington-type events [slashdot.org]. And go through dim/bright cycles (almost all stars are variable to some degree, including ours).

Colonizing the moon or Mars doesn't guarantee survival of the human race. The only real way to do that is to move the planet far away from the star -- a.k.a. Fleet of Worlds. This is part of the wisdom contained in the Known Space books.

A sufficiently advanced and long-lived civilization comes to realize that its sun is a liability, not an asset.

That's why the early advanced civilizations engineered most of the coalescing hydrogen into a multitute of gas giants instead of the stars most would have ended up in. Providing them with vast reservoirs of unspent fuel for the future. Also accounting for the 'missing mass' of dark matter. As soon as we can figure out whey they encased them in a non-reflective dyson-sphere-like structure.

If I have it right, humans have been around in anatomical form for about ~200,000 years. And in about one billion years, the sun will begin expansion. Let's also say that in only 500,000,000 years it will already be unlivable on Earth for the reasons you mentioned.

We would still have ~2500 'lifetimes-of-humanity-thusfar' to figure it out.

Of course reaching the end of its life and going nova or red giant is bad. But even well before that, stars are known to throw nasty flares and Carrington-type events [slashdot.org]. And go through dim/bright cycles (almost all stars are variable to some degree, including ours).

Actually, even if the Sun behaves in a perfectly orderly fashion, life on Earth will be doomed long before that since the total radiative output of the Sun will gradually increase as the Sun will be moving on the H-R diagram main sequence. It could easily be unlivable here in just a few hundred million years.

food for thought as to how to keep the human species going long after the Sun starts going off the main sequence into red giant-hood

How about a little perspective here? Humans won't be around in four billion years. Hell, we haven't been around for two million. We'll either become extinct, or evolve into something else. In fact, I've been writing a little fiction [slashdot.org] about our descendants ten million years from now, who call us "protohumans".

I would have been far more interested to know what kind of crazy planet was capable of devouring stars.

Uh,... Uranus?

I always thought that Venus was the only crazy planet, especially in *that* time of the month. Of course, with Venus having no moon and with its day being longer than its year, it turns out that that time of the month happens on Venus pretty much all the time.

I think it would need technically need to be "star-devouring" to mean a planet that devours stars. As it stands, it is not strictly speaking ambiguous, unless you relax the rules somewhat. Since this is the Internet, though, I supposed relaxed rules are the norm, so you do make a valid point.

I [wikipedia.org] felt a great disturbance in the Force [wikipedia.org], as if millions of voices [wikipedia.org] suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

I [wikipedia.org] felt a great disturbance in the Force [wikipedia.org], as if millions of voices [wikipedia.org] suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

5 billion years? We'd actually be well established in other solar systems and have the ability to engineer our own solar system from scratch using our current one as resources for it.

Sometimes I almost wonder if those "hurtling stars" are in fact versions of these that have been built by some advanced civilization.The ability for a star to just be launched out of alignment with the galaxy just seems unlikely. Very unlikely.Literal starships in every sense of the meaning.Huge container around the star, ven

I guess some hyperbole comes in handy when you're trying for grants and other funding, it's definitely the norm for reporters. In the article though at least the researching team isn't quoted saying they observed it happening, but that they found evidence of it having happened. Another supposed scientist from Spain had to through in the "caught in the act" line though.

Granted something that far away will never be observed as it happened, but it's not like they observed the occurrence as it appeared here. It's like the difference between seeing the blood on the ground and a body and seeing the person being shot. One is seeing the act, one is seeing the evidence.

It's like the difference between seeing the blood on the ground and a body and seeing the person being shot. One is seeing the act, one is seeing the evidence.

No, its like the difference between just thinking that the gun pointed at your head is loaded and might kill you, and finding evidence that proves you're certainly going to die unless you do something about it.

Apart from that: Headline and TFS is sensationalist trash. No direct observation of the planet being devoured as suggested, we'll have to wait for the new L2 space telescope for even a possibility of that. All we have is an anomalous Li spectrum which **suggests**, in accordance with **currently accepted theory** of lithium propagation, that a planet **may** have just fallen into its parent star.

Apart from that: Headline and TFS is sensationalist trash. No direct observation of the planet being devoured as suggested, we'll have to wait for the new L2 space telescope for even a possibility of that. All we have is an anomalous Li spectrum which **suggests**, in accordance with **currently accepted theory** of lithium propagation, that a planet **may** have just fallen into its parent star.

They say our planet will be eaten by the sun in 5 billion years but.. how soon will the growing sun end life on earth? Our planet will be long dead by the time the sun actually touch's earth. So our life on earth is a lot lot shorter then 5 billion it could be a thousand or less were loosing Glaser at an alarming rate huge chunks of the Antarctic are popping off. Are we at the beginning of the end now?

The sun isn't going to get cooler as it grows, hell it might take the sun expanding by a foot to heat our planet to 150 degrees daylight temps. I don't know in no scientist but i bet the scientist know just when and how long we actually have. But its going to be far less then 5 billion far far less

Because our technology was not advancing as fast as it is now, or capable of the level of destruction that it soon will be. The answer to the Fermi Paradox is that species destroy themselves when technology gets to point where true space travel is possible. Technology advances technology, to the point that technological evolution advances far faster than societal evolution. As a result, technology is created that a species is not responsible enough to handle, and it destroys itself either in the form of w

A similar fate may await the inner planets in our solar system, when the Sun becomes a red giant and expands all the way out to Earth's orbit some five-billion years from now

I see this a lot, and it isn't unreasonable to believe, except for the fact that we will collide with the Andromeda [wikipedia.org] in four-billion years. We will likely be torn away from our sun and consumed by other masses before we have to worry about being swallowed

"But still, watching a star eating its own planets is not only cool in its own right, but also provides food for thought as to how to keep the human species going long after the Sun starts going off the main sequence into red giant-hood."

However, there is also a hypothesis that exoplanets observed by means of dimming may just be the star experiencing a giant sun spot. Rather than this being an exoplanet being devoured by a star, it may just be a star's sunspot closing up.

I initially read "Astronomers Watch a Star Devouring Planet" which read like the Planet was eating the Star which I was thinking WTF??????
After re-reading the OP and the title I realised that I had read it wrong.

I can't be the only one who comprehended the title as some monster planet that somehow devoured a star and immediately said, "WTF? It has to be the other way around." And sure enough, it is meant to be the other way around.